Full text of "Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings"
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494 TALKS ON t£ AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER " for liberation is muwukshatva.^ It means, practically, to be in a condition of desiring liberation. The question, by the way, has ofteti been asked whether this moksha, or liberatioti, is the same as Nirvana. No, clearly it is not. There has been a very great deal of misunderstanding about all these terms. The European Orientalists went always by the exact meaning of the Samskrit—I mean the derivation of the word. You know how often a derivation misleads, because, when a word enters into a langu- age, it is taken up according to the spirit of that people, and they often give it a new meaning. You get quantities of words in English which are derived from the same thing, yet have a different meaning. The word ^fact5' comes from the 'La^.mfactum—a thing which is done ; the word " feat " comes from exactly the same thing but through the Norman French, it is the same word as tt fact??; " fact" and t6 feat " are the same, and yet we use them with different meanings. But if, because they are derived from the same Latin woTd, you took them as mean- ing the same thing it would mislead you quite seriously. It is the same with the Samskrit. To take exactly the cut-and-dried meaning of a word from its de- rivation is misleading. We have an instance of that in .the word cc Nirvana/' which means cc blown out " The idea is that the consciousness of man is blown out, like flame, and that there is nothing left. Orient- alists constantly use that as a sort of explanation